RELEASE BLITZ – From Scratch by Rachel Goodman

A
down-home, feel-good debut Southern romance, From Scratch explores one woman’s
journey back home to Dallas, Texas, where her family is cooking up a plan that
doesn’t quite suit her tastes…

Thirty-year-old Lillie Turner grew up with maple syrup stuck to her skin and
bacon grease splattered on her clothes, courtesy of working in the family
diner. Thank goodness she escaped all that when she moved to Chicago five years
ago. Now a successful strategy consultant and newly engaged to a man who
complements her like biscuits and gravy, she has everything she wants.

When an urgent phone call about her father’s health pulls Lillie back to
Dallas, she soon learns it was a ruse to bring her home so she can run the
diner she’d rather avoid and compete in the Upper Crust, an annual baking
competition, with no option to withdraw. Lillie is furious and ready to run
back to Chicago, but her father’s haggard appearance makes her wonder if he’s
hiding something. Things go from bad to worse when Nick, her handsome ex and
the only man she ever truly loved, reappears, looking as scrumptious as ever.

Lillie’s trip home forces her to question the path she’s chosen, find her place
in the family she abandoned, and wonder if the life she left behind is what she
really wants after all.

I nod, too
exhausted to reply, and walk back and forth with my fingers linked behind my
head. A breeze washes over my face, cooling me, but still my lungs are
screaming. I can’t seem to suck in enough air.

Nick
strides over to me. “You want your breathing to come from deep in your
diaphragm. Right here,” he says, placing one hand on the curve of my back
and the other just below my rib cage, applying pressure. “Can you feel
that?” His gaze rakes over my face, painfully slow, as though he’s afraid
to miss something.

Is he
kidding? His palms are burning holes in my shirt, making me dizzy, and he wants
to know if I can feel that? Suddenly I go from barely being able to retain
oxygen in my lungs to a total inability to breathe at all. I should be shocked
that after all this time a simple touch from him has the power to steal my
breath, but after what happened between us at the Tipsy Teakettle, nothing
surprises me anymore.

Stepping
away, I pick up the water bottle lying on the ground by his feet and gulp some
down, the liquid sloshing around in my stomach.

“Drink
it slowly. Otherwise you’ll throw up,” he says, tugging on my ponytail. My
heart trips in my chest at the way his voice dips with his playful scolding.
Sticking out my tongue, I squirt some water at him and stretch my aching
muscles. Nick does his own form of post run recovery, which involves some
strange yoga poses mixed with light strength exercises. I squeeze my eyes shut
when I hear him groan, the sound similar to those he once murmured during sex.

After he’s
done, he uses the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his neck and forehead. His chest
expands and retracts with his breathing, his skin glistening. I swallow
thickly, watching a bead of sweat travel down the length of his torso and
absorb into his mesh shorts. Everything about Nick is corded muscle and hard,
chiseled angles and lines. My eyes drop to his hands resting on his hips, and I
have an overwhelming urge to feel them on me. My whole body clenches as I
remember exactly what those fingers are capable of.

A dog
barks, snapping me out of my haze. I focus on the college-age guy playing fetch
with a golden retriever across the park and wait for my heart rate to return to
normal.

I balk.
“I wasn’t checking you out. You were doing those weird poses, and I was
curious.”

He laughs,
deep and sexy, erasing all of my common sense. His soles scuff against the
gravel as he saunters toward me. He stops and stands so close I can feel the
heat radiating off his body and see the faint scar above his left eyebrow—a
casualty from back in my diner days when I accidentally opened the freezer door
into his face.

When he
speaks, his words send a shiver down my spine. “You forget, Lillie, I know
your blush.”

My breath
hitches, and his smile grows into that destructive grin that’s always been
deadly to me. I force my eyes away, over to the other side of the parking lot
where a woman is adjusting a set of ankle weights, back to the guy still
tossing a tennis ball with his dog, down at my grungy shoelaces, anywhere other
than at him.

“At
least I used to,” Nick says, low and hoarse. “Before . . .”

He settles
a hand on the crook of my neck, his thumb ghosting along my collarbone, and
everything inside me ignites, alive and volatile. I look at him, and the
intensity in his stare causes a fresh wave of heat to rush through me. I lean
toward him, pulled by invisible fingers. His gaze flicks to my mouth, and as if
on their own volition, my lips part. My breath comes in shallow gasps, my body
humming in anticipation, waiting for him to pin me against my truck and kiss me
the way he did at the Tipsy Teakettle. The way he used to.

Rachel
Goodman is the critically acclaimed author of the Blue Plate and How to Score
series. She was raised in Colorado on Roald Dahl books and her mother’s
award-worthy cooking. Now an engineering professor at her alma mater, Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, she has not lost her passion for
culinary discovery or a well-told story. A member of RWA, she continues to hone
her craft through the Writer’s Path at SMU while seeking to create the perfect
macaroni and cheese recipe. Follow her on Twitter (@mojitomaven), Instagram
(@mojitomaven), and Facebook (@RachelGoodmanBooks), or visit her website at
rachelgoodmanbooks.com.